2012 F.X. Pichler Riesling Durnsteiner Kellerberg Smaragd

The Pichlers’ 2012 Riesling Smaragd Kellerberg delivers an enormous concentration of lusciously rich, sweetly ripe white peach, Persian melon, grapefruit and pineapple, mingled with almond cream, blond tobacco and Szechuan pepper. Bittersweet iris perfume wafts throughout this magnificent performance, while the superbly sustained finish introduces a cyanic intensity of fruit pit whose bitterness is tamed and stimulatingly integrated thanks to sheer generosity of fruit and inner-mouth perfume. There were some shriveled berries here, notes Lucas Pichler, which no doubt contribute to the sense of opulence not to mention of sheer ripeness; yet there is only 13.5% alcohol. Plan to follow this beauty through at least 2025. “In recent years,” notes Lucas Pichler, “we’ve been harvesting a little earlier in order to depress the alcohol levels a bit,” which in 2012 meant among other things beginning with Gruner Veltliner Federspiel already in the third week of September. After what I had tasted thus far of the vintage, I was amazed to find the Rieslings here in aggregate even finer than the Gruner Veltliners, a pattern that was to be dramatically accentuated at nearby Alzinger. (I did not get chance on my most recent visit to catch-up with Pichlers’ Sauvignon Blanc from this vintage.) Importer: Weygandt-Metzler Importing, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0700